


keep me closer

by emso



Series: the ultraviolet catastrophe [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Bottom Miya Atsumu, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Minor Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Pining, Top Sakusa Kiyoomi, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:00:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29404461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emso/pseuds/emso
Summary: Twelve days after the two of them start fucking, Hinata asks them as the changeroom slowly empties, “Ah, also! Kageyama’s visiting for the weekend – could he maybe come to dinner with us on Friday?”Kiyoomi tucks his water bottle into his gym bag and pulls the zipper closed. He doesn’t look at Atsumu to watch his face change, but hears the stupid plastic grin that overembellishes his voice anyway.“What, y’still call him that, Shouyou? Bet he still calls you ‘Hinata’, too.” Some terrible forgery of a real Atsumu laugh. “You two sure you’re even datin’?”Sakusa Kiyoomi is supposed to be good at taking precautions.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: the ultraviolet catastrophe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993675
Comments: 20
Kudos: 152





	keep me closer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ankal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankal/gifts).



> my (month late) vday exchange fic for berf, whose request was simply that i finish part 2 of uv catastrophe. i love you and all our late night existential chats very dearly!
> 
> a very very sincere thank you to my kind and generous betas - [sumo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenjaemrens), [eska](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eskarina), [kaylee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disobae) \- who were patient with my relentless questions and uncertainties for the first eight drafts of this, and then showered the ninth with enough love that i finally managed to post it.
> 
> this can be read as a standalone! but it is technically part 2 of [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27303949) and might provide some context if you're interested :)
> 
> ⚠️ cw  
> \- injury/blood metaphors  
> \- references to smoking
> 
> title is from billie eilish's _when the party's over_ , but i specifically listened a lot to the [pentatonix](https://open.spotify.com/track/7H65YhSRqhuqagPlBwxNWp?si=O-2vE4C5ReWHV4WGz3h6Og) version as ~mood music~ for this one.

“Are you havin’ fun?” Atsumu asks him, over breakfast, two months and three days in.

Butter knife scraping against ceramic; air-con whirr. Plum jam. Kiyoomi looks at him, sharply.

Atsumu is pouring himself juice with all the attention of a child tasked with the cosmic responsibility of carrying something fragile into another room, careful not to let the stream drift, spill onto clean marble. The tip of his tongue sneaks out the corner of his mouth and nudges at a purple smudge there.

He finishes pouring. Puts the carton down.

Says airily, “Just checkin’.” And lifts his eyes now to meet Kiyoomi’s, solar-bright, honest. “So. Are you?”

+

At first, it’s almost easy, the compartmentalisation of it all.

Because Atsumu isn’t the type who’s good at looking away, and Kiyoomi isn’t the type who’d miss that. Hinata Shouyou is in love with someone who loves him back and so, naturally, he basks at all hours in the warm giddy fluorescence that comes with it. It’s really no surprise that Atsumu can’t stop looking at him, his gaze unwillingly baited by Hinata’s elated high even as it no doubt lacerates him, letting himself be tugged along regardless, a trail of shallow bloodstains in his wake. Kiyoomi follows behind and wordlessly wipes them down.

Twelve days after the two of them start fucking, Hinata asks them as the changeroom slowly empties, “Ah, also! Kageyama’s visiting for the weekend – could he maybe come to dinner with us on Friday?”

Kiyoomi tucks his water bottle into his gym bag and pulls the zipper closed. He doesn’t look at Atsumu to watch his face change, but hears the stupid plastic grin that overembellishes his voice anyway.

“What, y’still call him that, Shouyou? Bet he still calls you ‘Hinata’, too.” Some terrible forgery of a real Atsumu laugh. “You two sure you’re even datin’?”

Hinata’s cheeks fill with colour. “It’s just habit,” he says, his hands doing an embarrassed little dance as though in demonstration, more endearing than helpful. “It still feels kind of – _weird_ to call him anything else. But we’re getting there! There’s no hurry – we’ve got time.”

And – well. How stunning and unsuspecting the twist of the knife: to tack on, just like that, the casual implication of forever.

Now is the worst time to look. Without question. But whatever feeble string that was keeping him from doing it snaps then, and Kiyoomi finds himself pausing with one hand around the strap of his bag to glance over, mostly against his will, at the locker Atsumu’s leaning against, and – _ha_. God, he’s always been ludicrously easy to read, if you only know where to look.

Too bad Kiyoomi knows precisely where.

Too bad that, even so, he can’t grab Hinata by the shoulders and shake him and tell him to _stop talking_ – that he can’t reach out and tug Atsumu close to kiss him senseless until this entire conversation dissolves into a backbeat – that the transparent light of tawny eyes still throws Kiyoomi’s breath, dislodges his heart, with complete and utter disregard for the fact that they aren’t turned his way at all, that that’s the entire fucking _point_ of all of this.

They’re just racing towards an end, he thinks, shriek of static crawling though him. If he reached out now, all he’d catch would be the finish line.

He hauls the gym bag onto his shoulder. “I don’t think any of us care who comes to dinner,” he remembers to say to Hinata, at the very last second, with a keener edge than strictly necessary. “As long as you two keep the gross factor minimal. I want to be able to stomach the food, thanks.”

Atsumu shifts a little at that. _Don’t_ mistake it for an act of kindness, Kiyoomi wants to snap, the words acrid on the back of his tongue. It’s not me being considerate on your behalf. I’m not _selfless_. I’m just— 

“Runnin’ off already, Omi-kun?” The metallic twang of shoulder blades pushing themselves off a locker. “Wait up a second, then – I’ll come with ya.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t spell out what they both know as they make the walk to his car side-by-side. Nor does he at any point during the silent and strangely fraught drive home; nor when Atsumu nosedives into the bed as soon as they arrive, tossing back a nonchalant command over one shoulder not to “hold back tonight, Omi-kun”, though he does offer up in its stead what he thinks is a well-deserved look of contempt as he replies, “Since when do I ever ‘hold back’?”

No. What Atsumu needs tonight isn’t the well-meaning condescension of a heart-to-heart. What he needs is exactly what he’s asked for and not a sliver more: to be fucked into Kiyoomi’s mattress roughly, uncharitably, like he’s being devoured from the inside out by something like reciprocation. And so Kiyoomi does just that. Takes and takes and takes with a kind of bitter abandon, leaves half-moons in the shape of his fingernails imprinted across Atsumu’s shoulders, snatches up the feverish sounds of his gasping, the sounds of his brazen voice breaking as he clenches around Kiyoomi and cries out and spills into his own fist, his whole frame impossibly aquiver, his skin sweat-damp against freshly changed sheets pooling with the phantom ichor that beads from the places where their wounds intersect.

Afterwards, he listens to Atsumu lift himself off the bed with a satisfied groan and pad into the bathroom to glance over the marks on his back – laugh to himself, a real one this time, then make some moronic joke about _goin’ above and beyond_ that echoes off the spotless tiles and drowns itself out – the punchline ending up mostly garbled, incomprehensible.

There’s something gnawing in the apertures of Kiyoomi’s ribcage. He twists his hands into the warm sheets under him.

Atsumu reappears at the bedroom door. “God, I needed that,” he yawns, stretching. “Thanks, Omi-kun.”

Abruptly, the urge to spike a ball straight through the wall seizes Kiyoomi. For fuck’s sake, he barely manages not to snarl at Atsumu, the intensity of the compulsion inexplicable and staggering, stop _thanking_ me. Stop it. I hate hearing you say that. I hate it. I hate you. I _hate_ you – can’t stand how fucking badly I _want_ you – every hateful hopeless last piece of you.

So leave. You need to leave, because I won’t. I can’t. I don’t know how.

He says evenly, “Whatever, Miya.”

Atsumu pulls a face at him, an exaggerated expression of hurt, as he fishes his sweats from the floor and shakes out its crinkles. Two minutes and he’ll be fully dressed again. Five minutes, out the door. Fifteen, and the sheets beside Kiyoomi will have completely cooled, as though the heat of another body had never even touched them at all.

“We must’ve given each other, like – at least twenty orgasms by now, surely,” Atsumu grouches, the words muffled by the shirt he’s in the process of gracelessly pulling over his head. “I thought we were gettin’ _closer_ , Omi-Omi. Would it kill ya to be a little nicer?”

The bed creaks. He’s sat down on one corner of the mattress to put his socks on. Kiyoomi tries not to notice the way the muscles of Atsumu’s shoulders and arms flutter under an expanse of still-flushed skin, carefully avoids touching even one single inch of him as he brushes past for his turn in the bathroom.

(Nothing but stupid questions, always. _Would it kill ya…?_ Yes. Obviously. Infinitely.)

+

_We’re almost out of lube, aren’t we,_ Atsumu texts him, _should I pick some up on the way?_

_If you want._

_Kay, I will then. You eaten already? Might grab a bento too._

…Dinner.

Sunday evening, nineteen days in, and Atsumu’s suggesting they have dinner together beforehand tonight. They haven’t, up till now. Kiyoomi had sort of assumed it was – out of bounds; simpler, perhaps, to think of it that way. One of those pinprick vital signs helping to keep his feet firmly chained to the earth.

The text cursor blinks up at him owlishly: _well? What’re you going to do, Kiyoomi?_

He’s taking a little too long to reply. Another message lights up the screen, just a series of question marks this time; and all of a sudden, in the ghostly blue of his kitchen, the bite of a contact name that has never been changed since the day it was entered flares briefly – _MIYA_.

(A pinprick. But enough.)

 _I’ve eaten_ , he sends, the bullet grazing past his ear. _I’m fine. Thanks for asking._

+

Actually, all this is easiest when they’re at their very closest. When you’re mouthing at a neck, you don’t have to look into bright eyes. There’s no hazardous smile in a voice ragged raw with the choke of a moan. Instead there is safety, safety in carnality that can camouflage even the honesty of want, veil it behind something Kiyoomi _is_ allowed to demand of Atsumu: a simpler desire, his hands, his tongue.

“Omi,” Atsumu will pant into his skin, falling apart beneath him with all his fingers tangled deep in Kiyoomi’s hair, “fuck, you feel so – _fuck_.”

Only in the thick of it does Kiyoomi dare to grit out through his teeth, sometimes, “What? I feel so what?” Every word they toss out now is but skin-deep anyway. He knows that. It’s fine because he knows.

“ _Hah_ – fuck, ah – _good_ , you feel so good, Omi, keep – keep—”

“Tell me,” he’ll hear himself say, closing his eyes to brace for the stupid senseless euphoria of hearing it, every single time. “Tell me. Atsumu. Tell me what you want.”

And the splintered gasp still blazes when it strikes. “— _you_.”

+

They never quite settle into a routine.

Kiyoomi thinks they almost do, once or twice. He cobbles together the bare bones of one: post-training drive home or doorbell after sundown, obligatory back-and-forth snarking in the entryway, a vanishing act into the shower at the end of it all to wash off any lingering traces of an illusion while Atsumu sits up in his bed, yawns, stretches, waits for his turn.

Except no pattern of habits ever reliably lasts. Atsumu makes sure of this.

First it’s the dinner that Kiyoomi had so narrowly sidestepped, which somehow ends up happening anyway – barely a week later – with some breezy explanation about a two-for-one deal at the convenience store between their apartments, Atsumu dumping a plastic bag on the kitchen counter and handing him a pair of disposable chopsticks that puncture right through the dragonfly-winged blueprints of their system – well. Well, whatever semblance of a system they have.

Over dinner and innocuous conversation and the tattered ruins of an almost-routine that he’s gone and kicked in the gut, Atsumu says, “Hey – y’know – we should do this more often, Omi-kun. I don’t mind bringin’ along dinner sometimes.”

Kiyoomi fixes him with a withering glare. “Not unless you learn how to swallow your food before talking,” he snipes, except he gets used to that soon enough, just like he acclimatises to the dinners as a whole, and he thinks maybe they can just be part of the new formula for their arrangement he’s working out from scratch.

But then come the out-of-context kisses. Post-training, post-matches. In empty corridors and shadowed corners and sometimes even fleetingly in the thick of shower steam. Aching always with a candid frivolity that only belongs to one of them. He thinks maybe it’s just that Atsumu gets an adrenaline kick out of sneaking stolen kisses like this; pretending like they have to keep it all a secret when really there’s nothing compelling them to, like it’s gameplay, like it’s gambling.

Sure, then, we’ll gamble, Kiyoomi thinks a little wildly, kissing him back, _you’re_ the one who isn’t calling my bluff even though I can feel my heartbeat all the way down in my fingertips when you pull shit like this, even though some foreign feral part of me wants somebody to walk in on us right now so at least one person might maintain the mistake that you’re _mine_ —

And then – eventually – Atsumu falls asleep in his bed.

(One month, twelve days. That’s how long it takes for Atsumu to fall asleep in his bed.)

Because of course. Of _course_. Of course Atsumu winds up falling asleep in his bed.

And of course Kiyoomi doesn’t wake him up. In fact he doesn’t even touch Atsumu before he quietly turns and backs out of his own bedroom. There’s a knot in his throat and his hair’s still damp, the absurd inevitability of these things that he shouldn’t have let become inevitable drawing a mirthless huff of laughter out of him as he settles in for the night on the couch that they once fucked on, knowing already he won’t get a wink of sleep, not when his head reels with the afterimage of Miya Atsumu – who he’s liked since _high school_ , for fuck’s sake – sprawled across his mattress with his lashes fluttering against his cheeks and the sunkissed plane of his back heaving gently and every tiny careless thing about him just making Kiyoomi want him more and more and more and more—

He closes his eyes, snatches the notion right out of the air before it can take shape. Rolls over onto his side on the couch. Waits for the polyester to mould a little better to his body.

(How Atsumu takes root like so, slipping into crevices Kiyoomi had forgotten to stitch closed. How he closes in relentlessly like branches growing out and around. How there’s no real route to stumble away from someone like him, only into him, right back into him, his bait, his switch, all of it.)

In the navy twilight he tells himself that it’s possible to get used to anything. Even this.

+

The next query that one impossibly diligent Hinata Shouyou graces their team cooldown with is this: “Okay – so – how many anniversaries do you think is too many?”

Inunaki unfolds himself out of a stretch and peers up somewhat incredulously at Hinata from the floor. “How many… _what_? Is this some weird roundabout way of asking us how many years you should date Kageyama before you break up or something?”

“No!” Hinata says at once, his vehemence palpable. “ _No_. What I meant was – well, I was talking to Natsu on the phone and she asked me what I’m doing for our two-month thing. But I hadn’t really thought that—”

Astumu snorts, cutting him off. “You don’t have to do a two-month thing, Shou-kun,” he says. He leans down to fiddle briefly with a loose loop on his shoelaces before straightening again. Kiyoomi waits for him to drag the jibe further as he always does, Kageyama tossed in as collateral maybe, some churlish but ultimately harmless dig at the unconventionality of their romance, the opportunity for it glittering right there.

But it’s Tomas’ voice that slips into the vacancy; there’s nothing else out of Atsumu. Instead, two exasperated eyes flit up without a word to catch Kiyoomi’s, swivel in a discreet roll that is more amused than bitter, and then, when Kiyoomi only blinks at him blankly in response, crinkle just at their ends into an unstudied grin – as though he finds the controlled impassiveness of the reaction somehow endearing.

Kiyoomi barely trusts himself to hold it. His lungs feel like they’re leaking air. The floor of his gut’s given way already, prickle of frozen heat on his neck, both ears ringing with the beep of a sudden flatline.

Part of him wants to grab Atsumu right now – haul him to one of those nooks where they trade their unnecessarily covert kisses – press him to a wall, cold concrete on his back, and wring the answer out of him: _are you over it? Does this mean you’re over him?_

What would Atsumu even do? Shake him off with a perplexed frown, probably. _The hell—? Omi. What are you talkin’ about all of a sudden? Why are you—?_

_Because you looked away from him. You never used to. You looked at me instead._

Roots that have already long found ground now suddenly threaten to branch upwards too, break through carefully laid canopy, diverge.

_You’re just about over him, aren’t you._

He thinks he might be the first of them to notice it. He could point it out, bring it to Atsumu’s attention. He could ask.

_If you’re over it. Do we stop this now?_

He could ask. He should.

Except quite suddenly it’s like his very last desperate traces of clarity have been flung into disarray, and all it took – _all_ it took – was that single, thoughtless flicker of hazel his way.

For fuck’s sake, Atsumu, he almost bursts out. Why did you have to look at _me_.

“Jesus, Sakusa,” says Meian, his good-natured chuckle clipping into the middle of the teetering train of thought. “I know you’re flexible and all, but are you planning on holding that stretch till next year? Take it easy on your hamstring, will you? You’re about to tear the poor thing in half.”

+

This is the arrangement for mornings after they’ve shared a bed the whole night: Atsumu makes breakfast, Kiyoomi drives them both to training. There are two kinds of milk in the fridge and a spare toothbrush has taken up residence in the sanitiser. Some days they talk over the sound of the morning news on the TV; today, just the hum of the air-con.

Two months, three days, and it seems a new routine can so neatly develop like this, right out of the ruins of a first draft.

“…so I told him that he only picked up smokin’ in the first place ‘cause – y’know – I’m not allowed to, and he wants to rub it in my face.” Atsumu picks up another piece of toast, streaks a truly ungodly amount of jam across it, and then folds it down haphazardly across its diagonal into a prototype sandwich that he fits into his mouth in two bites.

“You,” says Kiyoomi flatly, fixing him with a reflexive look of disdain, “have a disturbingly consistent talent for making everything about yourself. What did Osamu-san say?”

“That he’ll stick a lit cigarette up my nose next time he sees me if I keep makin’ shit about myself.”

Atsumu says this around a full mouthful of toast. Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose.

“Anyway. I get that it’s probably just ‘cause he needed some kind of stress relief,” Atsumu says, once he’s done swallowing, “but – I dunno – I guess I just wish he hadn’t chosen somethin’ that’s so actively bad for him. Like, you smoke and feel good for a bit, I get it, but you’re also sort of fuckin’ yourself up at the same time. Y’know?”

Yes, he does, and actually he’s pretty sure that Miya Osamu also knows. It’s just that sometimes – even while knowing better – you can’t help but grasp at what’s right there in front of you.

He’s in the middle of deciding how much of this to say out loud when Atsumu speaks again, unprompted.

“Hey, Omi-kun. By the way.” Atsumu reaches for his glass and starts filling it with apple juice. He’s being uncharacteristically careful with it, like he doesn’t want to sully Kiyoomi’s spotless counters, like he doesn’t want to make a mess. “I wanted to ask – are you havin’ fun?”

Kiyoomi looks at him sharply. No additional context is offered. Not that he needs any to grasp at once what the question means, but it sure as hell would be useful in giving him a shred of an inkling as to where this is going next.

Atsumu licks at a smudge of jam on his lips, finishes pouring, and then looks up to meet Kiyoomi’s stare unfalteringly. “Just checkin’.”

He hasn’t quite managed to get all the jam off; the corner of his mouth is stained purple. Kiyoomi wants to reach over and thumb it away for him. He grips his mug a little tighter.

“…So?” prompts Atsumu, when he still doesn’t get even a vague sound in response, putting down the carton to take a sip. “Are you?”

There’s only one of them who has things that need hiding. He can take this at face value, Kiyoomi knows; it’s just as guileless, just as forthright as every other one of Atsumu’s manoeuvres throughout all this.

Which means, then, that there’s only one thing this could really be. A junction; he’s being offered an out, just in case.

_You’re just about over him, aren’t you—?_

He knows he should take it.

He knows he should take it with the same reluctance with which he knows several other things now. He knows, for instance, that Atsumu snores if they leave the air-con on while they sleep. He knows that Atsumu’s developed a bit of an unexpected addiction to Kiyoomi’s favourite plum jam but just freeloads generously while he’s here rather than getting into the habit of buying jars of it for his own place. He knows how Atsumu sounds first thing in the morning, how his bleached hair stands staticky against the pillowcase when he wakes, how he makes the same stupid joke about being charged-up with magic whenever it happens, which is always, without fail.

These are things Kiyoomi doesn’t want to know. But it’s too late now because he knows them, and he can’t un-know them, and he’ll continue knowing them whether or not they stop hooking up.

Miya Osamu needs to quit smoking. Sakusa Kiyoomi needs to quit his brother. The difference is that one of them is supposed to be risk-averse by nature.

He leans across the counter and kisses Atsumu.

Atsumu’s lips immediately curve into a smile against his, one of his hands coming to wrap around the back of Kiyoomi’s neck, fingertips sneaking into his hair. He tastes like the honeyed tartness of a plum jam stain. He smells of Kiyoomi’s shampoo. And when he backs off he’s still grinning, clouded in the clear bright sunlight of early summer that washes the whole kitchen with a gentler colour, lets it all pass for a moment as something it definitively isn’t.

“I’m guessin’ that’s a yes,” Atsumu laughs, and Kiyoomi says bluntly without missing a beat, “What do you _think_ , Atsumu.”

_If you’re over it. Do we stop this now?_

This time he doesn’t dodge the bullet, catches spinning steel between his teeth. His mouth floods over with the cold tang of metal.

(No. Let’s not. Not yet.)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! sorry that it's still sad though lol


End file.
